A shuttered Alpharetta company that provided home foreclosure services to lenders has been indicted on forgery charges in Missouri.
In one of the few criminal actions in response to reports of widespread improprieties against homeowners, the company, DocX, and its Alpharetta founder and former president, Lorraine O. Brown, were indicted by a Boone County, Mo., grand jury Tuesday on 136 counts of forgery in the preparation of documents used to evict financially strained borrowers from their homes.
DocX was one of the largest companies executing and notarizing mortgage documents for big banks and loan servicers.
Florida-based owner Lender Processing Services closed the company in April 2010 and fired Brown in November 2009 after evidence emerged of apparent forgeries in the documents, a practice now called robo-signing.
Brown's lawyer, Mark Rosenblum, said Brown at no point directed employees to sign documents without proper consent. He said Brown intends to "vigorously defend" herself against the charges.
"She is not guilty of the forgery charges that have been lodged against her," he said.
Michelle Kersch, a spokeswoman for Lender Processing Services, said in an email that DocX was a small subsidiary of the company. Lender Processing Services voluntarily disclosed that it had discovered issues related to the DocX signings, Kersch said, and has been cooperating with the attorney general's office in Missouri for more than three months.
Kersch said she was disappointed the attorney general moved forward with the charges and said the company will defend itself against any untrue allegations.
Only a few instances of robo-signing have been reported in Georgia, but that does not mean it didn't happen here -- Georgia does not require a court hearing for a lender to complete a foreclosure, and in other states most bad documentation has been discovered in court.
Chris Koster, the Missouri attorney general, will prosecute the case.
"The grand jury indictment alleges that mass-produced fraudulent signatures on notarized real estate documents constitutes forgery," Koster said in a statement. "Today's indictment reflects our firm conviction that when you sign your name to a legal document, it matters."
Koster said his office's investigation was continuing. This suggests he may hope to persuade Brown to cooperate in his investigation of the parent company. If convicted, Brown could face up to seven years in prison for each forgery count. DocX, which was acquired by Lender Processing Services in 2005, could be fined up to $10,000 for each forgery conviction.
Scott Rosenblum, a lawyer at Rosenblum, Schwartz, Rogers & Glass who represents DocX and who is not related to Mark Rosenblum, said: "We have not had an opportunity to review the indictment at this point. The company intends to enter a plea of not guilty."
According to the indictment, Brown acted "knowingly in concert with DocX and its employees" to mislead and defraud the Boone County recorder of deeds. The documents central to the indictments were deeds of release, which eliminate a previous claim on an asset. Such releases are typically issued when a mortgage has been paid off.
Since evidence of pervasive foreclosure improprieties emerged, state officials have mostly brought civil suits against the institutions and law firms that filed the fraudulent documents. Individuals in Nevada, for example, have been charged with notary fraud.
The Missouri grand jury found that the person whose name appeared on 68 documents executed on behalf of a lender -- someone named Linda Green -- was not the person who had signed the papers.
The name Linda Green also appears in documents filed in Georgia courts related to foreclosure transactions.
The New York Times News Service contributed to this article.
